There is a need for an automated system for managing the processing of information from multiple, inter-related applications, wherein the applications may be housed on disparate hardware platforms and in diverse locations, and wherein the overall use of computer hardware resources are efficiently managed and the efforts of the users are made more efficient by the reduction of redundant inputs to the multiple disparate but related systems. Moreover, there is a need for an independent platform which a developer/vendor of applications can use to efficiently develop and ship its applications to its customers. This independent platform must facilitate application development on the platform, make use of proven core technology for information matching and distribution, and provide standardized access to connectivity with other systems and platforms in a users network.
Prior art systems of this type typically have an infrastructure which is tightly coupled to application products, specific hardware platforms and specific Operating systems and related services. Such systems are difficult to maintain, difficult to upgrade and difficult to extend to other applications as well as usually requiring redundant data input for their specific applications.
In the past, developers have turned to object-oriented programming (OOP) to improve programming and code maintenance efficiency for such systems and to the use of hardware platform independent languages like Sun Microsystems™ JAVA™ language and system, as tools for developing such platform independent applications support systems. Until recently, the use of Java has been focused on the client side of the client-server system architecture with the development of JavaBeans™ and Java servelet generation. More recently, the technology required to allow distributed objects to communicate with each other across either the client-server or server-server boundary has been provided by the EnterpriseJavaBeans (EJB)™ component architecture. This new architectural system and related tools and systems are well documented and well known to those skilled in these arts.
These tools and related systems are described in various whitepapers and tutorials found on the Sun web site at www.java.sun.com as well as in a plethora of books on JAVA and JAVA programming.
Attempts continue to be made to employ these new systems and architectures in the process of building generic applications systems platforms, in an attempt to make the applications platform independent of a given hardware and software platform, and to make them easier to use by developers and end-users. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,363 issued on Sep. 26, 2000 to Eugene Buzzeo et al provides an object-oriented, multi-threaded application development system and method for developing resource information software, wherein a three tier framework (web client and web browser—web server—application server) is disclosed. The system disclosed uses JAVA objects as connectors, components, agents, event servers, common objects with which to build applications for database related applications which are hardware platform independent. The system described in this patent tries to solve the problems of distributed object communications through the use of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and the InternetInterORB Protocol (IIOP). Applicants' system, through the use of the EJB architecture, use of EJB compliant sub-systems and use of the Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) interface provides an additional layer of abstraction to a Business Applications System Platform to improve the utility of such systems for business users.
Such platform independent languages, tools and sub-systems, while ostensibly making it easy for applications developers to create new business applications, nevertheless present an overwhelming technical problem for a user with a need for an efficient, integrated business system.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a business applications management system platform which can provide hardware platform independence, but also can provide client system and display protocol independence, permitting an easy integration of a new application into an already complex interconnection of in-house developed code and third party code, can provide a robust security system, an interconnect system containing data import, export and event monitoring & reporting facilities which is protocol independent of related applications, and which can provide a business server which can manage business logic rules which minimizes database access pools. The current invention provides these facilities in various new and novel ways as more fully described below.